We’re All In This Together

I f you’ve read my articles in the past, you know that I disdain business books. Not because they are not well,-written, and not because there isn’t value in the messages. There generally is.

My problem is that so often folks read the book, nod vigorously and commit to following the principles that the book inspires. Then they go back to work. Those very principles that were so inspirational are hard to implement because they aren’t shared in a way that “the system” supports.

Take “servant leadership.” Back in 1979, Robert Greenleaf suggested that leaders must first become servants because it is important to first want to serve. The implication is building a bond of mutual responsibility to each other. So the reader becomes inspired to become a servant leader, and two months later has to present a performance review to an employee. He doesn’t agree with the review, but the bell curve would not permit the higher ranking he wanted to give. So mutual respect goes out the window when he delivers the review and cannot authentically help the employee understand the rating.

Simon Sinek perpetuated the concept with “Leaders East Last,” What a wonderful concept….leaders are in their positions to serve those they lead, and to put others’ well-being ahead of their own. But oops, those very leaders have marked parking spaces closest to the building so that they won’t get wet running to their cars when it rains.

So there you have my problem with inspiration – it only works when all of the messages are consistent.

But servant leadership is real, and creates a very unique bond for any group that “we’re all in this together.” Consider this story about General James Mattis. This is but a small example of why his troops follow him, willingly and loyally.

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“A General Mattis Christmas Story”

Posted 12/20/2010

A couple of months ago, when I told General Krulak, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, now the chair of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, that we were having General Mattis speak this evening, he said, “Let me tell you a Jim Mattis story.”

General Krulak said, when he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, he and his wife would bake hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christmas cookies. They would package them in small bundles.

Then on Christmas day, he would load his vehicle. At about 4 a.m., General Krulak would drive himself to every Marine guard post in the Washington-Annapolis-Baltimore area and deliver a small package of Christmas cookies to whatever Marines were pulling guard duty that day. He said that one year, he had gone down to Quantico as one of his stops to deliver Christmas cookies to the Marines on guard duty. He went to the command center and gave a package to the lance corporal who was on duty.

He asked, “Who’s the officer of the day?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.”

And General Krulak said, “No, no, no. I know who General Mattis is. I mean, who’s the officer of the day today, Christmas day?”

The lance corporal, feeling a little anxious, said, “Sir, it is Brigadier General Mattis.”

General Krulak said that, about that time, he spotted in the back room a cot, or a daybed. He said, “No, Lance Corporal. Who slept in that bed last night?”

The lance corporal said, “Sir, it was Brigadier General Mattis.”

About that time, General Krulak said that General Mattis came in, in a duty uniform with a sword, and General Krulak said, “Jim, what are you doing here on Christmas day? Why do you have duty?” General Mattis told him that the young officer who was scheduled to have duty on Christmas day had a family, and General Mattis decided it was better for the young officer to spend Christmas Day with his family, and so he chose to have duty on Christmas Day.

General Krulak said, “That’s the kind of officer that Jim Mattis is.”[/message] [su_spacer]

The story above was told by Dr. Albert C. Pierce, the Director of the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics at The United States Naval Academy. He was introducing General James Mattis who gave a lecture on Ethical Challenges in Contemporary Conflict in the spring of 2006. This was taken from the transcript of that lecture. I copied it from an email that was being shared among the USMC Community.”

‘Nuf said.